


By My Own Hand or None

by DrJekyl



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Animal Sacrifice, Blood Magic, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Modern Era, The Crystal Court, but hopefully in a non-glorified way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 14:31:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11488323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrJekyl/pseuds/DrJekyl
Summary: The cost of freeing Pearl from the Winter Queen is a steep one, but one Pearl and Rose have met, without hesitation, every year for over five thousand years.  For the first time since it all began, Rose is not with her, Rose's power is not there to bolster her, and Pearl is no longer certain that she will be able to pay what she must.





	By My Own Hand or None

**Author's Note:**

> This should function as a standalone, but it's probably best to read the others in the collection to date ([Inculpate](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11054109) and [Fusion, Freedom, Reinvention](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11071986), first).

It was the first time she’d done this alone.

In truth, she wasn’t entirely sure that it would work without Rose.  How could anything, even the fierce light of the midday sun, banish this chill from her bones, in a world without Rose?  But Rose had been certain that it would still work with her gone.  Moreover, Rose had extracted a promise from her, a promise binding and true and all-too well-worded, that she would protect her son, that she would guide him and teach him the ways and secrets of her people.  That she would do all in her ability, short of causing him greater harm, to prevent him from coming under the power, into the ‘favour’ of one of the Queens or their Court.

The thought of the squalling, pink-skinned babe, with his father’s nose and his father’s ears and his mother’s eyes, made the sun seem even further away.  Her heart was wreathed in hoarfrost. And yet...

And yet.

The place had never mattered.  It was only the timing, the means.  In worse days, in times of war and worry and strife, they had broken bread in bivouacs and stolen salt from the sea.  The blood of a fallen soldier on the edge of a battlefield worked just as well, worked _better_ than that of a rabbit or a deer fed a year of kindness before slaughter.  But they - but _she_ had always preferred to come back here, back to the floating islands, back to the place where it had all begun and ended too.  It felt... fitting.

Pearl knelt, blue-tipped fingers trembling as she undid the knot and the silken bundle unfurled.  A loaf of bread, freshly made by her own two hands, from barley to leaven to baking. A small bottle of oil and a pinch of salt, plain and unadulterated and once much harder to find than by a quick trip to the supermarket.  A rabbit, spelled to sleep, fur soft and warm, heart beating beneath her hand too fast to count.  Two knives.  A band of rowan set with iron, cold-forged and rust-free, a circlet one might have mistaken for a crown.

Her freedom, laid out upon yellowing silk.

Would that everything in her life were so clear.

She cut the bread carefully and adorned each piece with oil and salt.  The oil was not strictly necessary, but she’d found it helped with the real challenge: breaking her fast of six months.  For all that her mouth watered at the sight, the smell, the crusty crackle of fresh bread, her stomach churned and her throat seized and her mind cast itself back to the improbable feasts of fantasy and the flavours that burst like dying stars upon your tongue.  But that had been false.  Fantasy.   _Fae_.   _This_ was real bread, real salt and oil.  Even if it tasted as the ash of her winter meal, it was necessary to sustain her for another year.

Bound by her promise, the bread vanished, bite by bite, and she refused to be sick from it.

When she was done, she rose and disrobed, standing in the midday sun as bare and defenseless as the forgotten day she had been born.  She soothed the rabbit into deeper slumber, deep enough that it would not feel the pain of her breaking its neck with a quick, precise snap, nor that of her knife piercing its hide, hot blood searing her fingers and painting them red.  She quashed the pang of regret and sympathy for a creature used to serve the needs of another, and anointed herself in heartsblood as she had first been shown: her cheeks, her breasts, her belly, her throat.

Her heart.

Only then did she reach down for the circlet, taking it in bloodied hands that blistered at the touch of wood and iron, raising it to encapsulate the solstice sun.  She closed her eyes and ignored the burn, breathed in deep and spoke the words of five thousand solstices before.

“My name,” she said slowly, clearly, “is the Knight of the Roses.  I am forged of iron.  I am quenched in blood.  I am tempered by winter. I call no-one my master.  Only those who speak my name in knowing may ask any favour of me.”

She lowered the circlet to her brow.

In that moment, she was _renewed_ , ice banished from her veins, snow from her skin, frost from her heart.  She was _free_ , free of Winter, free of the Court, of the Queen, the life of glamour and cruelty and agonising beauty.  She was _between_ , iron on her skin without burning, hunger in her belly that did not need sating. Earth beneath her feet, magic beneath her skin, light and air all around.

Not fae.  But not human either.  Lesser, and yet more than either could ever be.

Crowned by her own hand, standing tall and slender and bloodied at the very height of the summer sun, she wept.  She wept in choking silence and despair as the sun banished the chill from her bones and brought light and life and humanity back to her soul for another year.

Rose had been certain it would still work with her gone.

Pearl had hoped it wouldn’t.


End file.
